Our Travels

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9/27/2007

September 27, 2007 – Popcorn and Wind Power

We woke this morning to many geese on the lake – getting ready for their trip south.

Fall is definitely here!!We continued our travels in Iowa. The countryside is so beautiful with the fall colors and harvesting.

We stopped in Danbury at a Ford dealer for a fix on our MH. We had a recall on the cruise control unit (apparently it can cause a fire!). The fix only took a short time and we were on our way again.

We stopped in Sac City to see the world’s largest popcorn ball:

This 3100 lb popcorn ball set a new Guinness world record when it was created in 2004. It is 7’ tall and 23’ in circumference and it is housed in its own building. The grounds also have museums on life in this area but all the buildings were closed. (One of the downsides in traveling this time of year is that many things are only open on the weekends.)

We traveled to Storm Lake and are camped at the city campground – Sunrise Campground – another nice place. One of the reasons we are here is to see the Wind Farm. The Buena Vista County Wind Farm is one of the largest wind energy projects in the world. There are more than 360 turbines up to 213’ tall.

The campground host gave us a brochure on a self-guided tour so off we went. What an experience. There are so many of these turbines throughout the area and they are HUGE!!

Some pictures:

Here is one of me at one of the blades:

This one is 79’ long for the smaller units. There are bigger units here and those blades are 113’ long – Incredible!!!

The reason that they are in this area is that the wind averages 17 mph on a daily basis. And today was not different - today’s average was 23 mph. So no campfire again tonight.

After supper we took a walk near the lake. Here is a picture of the lake – the campground is on the right.

And a sunset on the lake:

Tomorrow we are continuing our journey. There is a storm coming this way and they are calling for 40 mph winds for Saturday so we want to get as far east in Iowa as we can and hopefully we can get out of the winds.